NO CALL

Thanksgiving was a very busy and nice day as we were able to have lunch and dinner with each of our families.

Well, it was another long Friday with no call, meaning we do not know when we are traveling yet. We are beginning to hate Friday’s. We hope that next week will be our week, just as we hoped this week would be our week. The waiting is really hard. OK, more than just hard, it is a painfully long, anxiety producing, torturous process. We were initially told that we would be traveling as soon as the end of the month and maybe even earlier if we did not mind going over Thanksgiving. However, with no call today, we are obviously not traveling in November and we are now just hoping to travel before Christmas. We have no idea why we have not gotten the call, but we are obviously tired of waiting.

On a more positive note, several of our internet friends, some also with our agency, have received "the call" and the good news about travel. Lauren and Marco will be traveling to the Moscow soon to meet their daughter and Lisa and Scott are going to Moscow City to meet their son. Additionally, Missi and her husband (different agency) are leaving Thursday for trip two to pick up their chubby blonde hair daughter. We are very happy for everyone and we are even more anxious now to get our call.

If we do not get a call soon, Jeff and I will be booking rooms at a local psychiatric institution for an extended stay. Keep us in your prayers.

Maria and Jeff

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PICTURES!!

Well, we finally have some pictures on our blog. Thanks to the expert technical assistance from our friend Sandra who helped us with guidance like, use the software your camera came with and make sure the camera is on when you plug it into the computer. She also gave us good advice on saving and storing pictures.

This is a picture of our crib! The wall color is not the color we are keeping, but gives you an idea of what things could look like. The crib has a drawer underneath, but it is covered by the dust ruffle.

Below is a picture of some baby shoes. Obviously, Maria has a little problem collecting shoes. Thanks to our family and friends who may recognize a couple pair from their kids.

That is all for today. Obviously we did not get "the call" yet. Hopefully soon!

Jeff and Maria

Remember the Carly Simon song turned Heinz ketchup commercial?

"Anticipation, is keeping me waiting."

Well, we are waiting in anticipation of "The Call." We have been keeping very busy waiting and setting up the new crib. We will try to attach a picture of it soon, but what you need to know is that, we are both technologically challenged. We barely know how to use a digital camera (and never worked an Ipod either), let alone download or upload pictures to attach. We are working on it, but I think we may be hiring a local tutor from the neighborhood (Sandra) who can put a 60-picture slide show to music in less than a day.

We have picked colors for the room, once again. We are pretty sure that green, blue and off white are included in some combination and that airplanes will be a theme.

Some fellow blogers have asked if they could add our blog to their blog roll. Certainly! We are thrilled and glad to share our experience. It has been wonderful "meeting" so many fellow adoptive parents through this process. Maria had dinner last night with two fellow blogers (Melissa and Lauren) whose blogs are listed on our roll. Melissa and Mike have already been on trip one and met their son, so now they are just waiting for "the other call" to go bring their son home. Lauren and Marco are also going to the Moscow Region around the same time as us. We may get to travel together!

We hope to hear something (The Call) this week or next week so stay tuned.

Maria and Jeff

Getting Close!

Well, we are really starting to feel like we are getting closer to trip one. Our paperwork was turned into the Ministry of Education and we expect to hear from them by the end of next week. At that point, we are hoping that we will be given a travel date and be told that we will be visiting a boy or girl or siblings and their age. We will receive no other information until we land in Moscow. The good news is that this means that we could be traveling in three or four weeks. The way trip one will likely work is this; we will take a direct flight to Moscow departing New York at 5:20PM Saturday and arrive in Moscow on Sunday morning around 11:00AM. They are 8 hours ahead of us so it may feel like 3:00am to us. We will go to our hotel and check in and make sure we know where we need to be on Monday morning. We think we will go to the MOE and than be able to go to the baby home and meet our child, probably for a couple of hours. We will do that again on Tuesday and Wednesday. We want to take a local doctor with us to review the medical records and examine the child one of those days and assuming all goes well, we will go through the official process of requesting custody and a court date. We will take a direct flight out of Moscow on Friday at 12:25PM and arrive back in New York at 3:25PM. It is a 9 hour 40 minute flight over and a 10 hour and 30 minute flight back. The second (and FINAL) trip will be around 6 weeks later for our court hearing.

So, we have a lot to do in the next couple of weeks. We did buy a crib and ordered the rest of the furniture for the nursery (Thanks to both our parents). We have a great glider/rocker being loaned to us from our wonderful neighbors (Thanks Annie and JT!). We picked out colors to paint and may even have fabrics for linens. We still have to get some carpeting and do the painting as well as a million other things that we are now listing. Please keep us in your prayers and check back later this week to see if we have any news to report.

Maria and Jeff